He looked away, his tone light and dismissive.
"You're clean, so act like it. Don't bother with her."
I'd cried until midnight in that hotel room because of his messages.
He'd brought me medicine. I thought that meant he still cared, at least a little.
Turns out that little bit of caring wasn't even worth one sentence spoken aloud.
My voice rose sharply:
"Alvin! You're protecting her to this extent? She's spreading a slut-shaming rumor about me, and you tell me I've got nothing to worry about? She stole my guaranteed admission spot, and you tell me not to bother?!"
Alvin cut me off, his voice louder than mine.
"Then what do you want?! You didn't show up for the test! Freya did! She won the award! She got guaranteed admission! You can throw all the fits you want—none of that changes!"
I stood frozen, tears falling silently.
The corridor was quiet enough to hear the wind.
I turned to leave, and Freya suddenly grabbed the red cord around my neck.
"Wait, what's that you're wearing around your—"
The cord snapped.
The jade pendant slipped from my collar, flew outward, and dropped from the fifth floor.
I watched it arc through the air and land in the flower bed below.
That was the only thing my mother ever left me.
She'd said this pendant would protect me for life.
It had cracked once before, and I'd cried for three days and three nights. Alvin was the one who'd gone to every jade shop in the city until he found someone who could piece it back together.
When he fastened it around my neck again with his own hands, he'd said:
"If it ever breaks again, I'll find you something even better."
My whole body was shaking. I shoved Freya hard.
She lost her balance and stumbled backward.
Alvin reached out and caught her.
He held Freya in his arms, looked up at me, his eyes cold as ice.
"Letitia, enough!"
"Do you have to go around snapping at everyone like a stray dog?"
I looked at Freya, safe and smug in his arms, that satisfied little smile at the corner of her mouth.
I said nothing. Turned and ran downstairs.
It was pouring outside.
I tore through the flower bed like I'd lost my mind. My nails broke against the dirt, mud jammed under the skin, and the pain shot straight up my arms.
Laughter drifted down from above.
"Look at her down there. Doesn't she look like a dog?"
"More like a pig, I'd say. A wild boar splashing around! Hahahaha."
Their voices threaded through the rain, each word a needle in my back.
The jade pendant had shattered into three pieces, lying in the muddy water.
I picked them up and closed my fist around them.
The shards cut into my palm, blood running out and washing away in the rain.
I knelt there in the downpour and finally cried out loud.
After that, I never went back to school.
My applications were already changed. My file was already picked up.
Alvin sent message after message.
[Letitia, stop throwing a tantrum. Freya didn't mean any harm.]
[The jade pendant broke. I'll find someone to fix it.]
[My parents want to have a meal with you. Come over to our place?]
[I got the lucky jade charm back.]
[Letitia!]
One after another. I didn't reply to a single one.
The day the admission results came out, he ran to the foot of my building.
He leaned on the doorbell. No one answered.
He called me. No one picked up.
He texted:
[Lettie, let me take you to see the campus. Get a feel for it early. Didn't you say you wanted to see Mirror Lake?]
[Lettie, we had a promise, didn't we?]
Mirror Lake.
We'd promised to go there together.
He'd said that there, he would have flowers and love waiting, and he would tell me how he felt.
A neighbor, one of the older women from our floor, saw him standing there and sighed.
"Alvie, Lettie went traveling."
"She did so well on her exams. She's going to South Coast University."
His hand started shaking around the phone.
The case—she'd given it to him. Two little figures printed on the back, holding hands in the snow. The colors had worn away to almost nothing. He'd never once replaced it.
"South Coast—she went to *South Coast*?!"
